Sinking into Slumber
Hm? It looks a little brighter around here...
As the black space he had shattered crumbled away, he sensed his surroundings brighten. Ordinarily, with no light to be had, he shouldn't have been able to see a thing — but as if such laws simply had no power over him, he could see everything around him perfectly well.
No, to be exact, he could see in front of him, beside him, behind him, and above him. All at once. That was possible only because countless eyes clung to his body, wrapping it as though to envelop it entirely.
So this is what my body looks like.
He lowered his gaze and examined himself. A black, slime-like body, tentacles sprouting from every corner of it — and eyes. Eyes everywhere.
It's... kind of gross, isn't it?
Even in the most charitable light, his form could never be called beautiful. It ran closer to terrifying and grotesque. Then again, if the one looking hadn't been him, a mere glimpse of the very tip of one of those tentacles — never mind the body it belonged to — would have meant instant death. And not just any death, but the most horrific form of dying the world could offer. Such was the helpless limitation of frail mortals—
Ugh, I can't look anymore. Too gross.
—but a being who could sum up an appearance no force of sanity could ever withstand with nothing more than the word gross was, quite simply, exempt from that limitation.
Mm... but now, what am I supposed to do...?
With his goal — putting a stop to his endlessly expanding, contracting body — finally gone, boredom came crashing over him all over again. There was no intelligent being to talk with, no toy to amuse himself with; at this moment, he didn't have so much as a pebble to his name.
Bored... so bored...
He sat where he was and turned the problem over and over in his mind, earnestly searching for some way to chase off the tedium. But all that ever came was boredom, and solitude, and the faintest touch of loneliness. In that desolate space washed in pale gray, only his tentacles swayed, slow and aimless.
He had been sitting there quietly, idly whiling away the time, when—
...Hm?
The demon of slumber wrapped itself around his body. He was hardly a being who needed sleep, but neither was he one who couldn't sleep at all — and in a place with absolutely nothing to do, drowsiness came all the more easily.
What... is this feeling...?
So strange... so unfamiliar... it's kind of nice...
To him — a being who didn't even know the concept of sleep — this, too, was simply another wondrous kind of game. Comfortable, languid, and warm, all at once. It was pleasure: the very first new emotion he had felt since the day he opened his eyes.
Which was precisely why he worried.
What if... I get tired of this, too...?
At first, even just walking through the black void had been fun. But as time wore on, that, too, had begun to pale, until at last he found himself standing still. For him, it had been the worst experience of his existence.
I don't want... to go through that again.
What he needed, then, was a game that would never, ever grow stale — no. What he needed was—
"...I need... a friend......."
Murmuring his wish over and over to himself, he toppled backward with a soft thump and let himself sink into sleep—
"...Is that so, now?"
Someone had been quietly watching him all along, and now that someone curled their lips into a cold, mirthless smile.